Self-Regulation Failure: Identifying and Modifying a Risk Phenotype

描述（由申请人提供）：人类行为涉及调节我们自己的心理状态以追求期望目标的独特能力，使我们的行为符合内部/外部标准，管理我们的情绪，应对出现的挑战和机遇。自我调节一词指的是人们为了追求个人目标而有意或自动地启动、维持和终止自己的思想和行为的过程。当人们考虑到一系列可追溯到目标追求问题的公共卫生问题时，理解自我调节的重要性就变得显而易见。许多会增加人们患病、残疾和死亡风险的行为——比如肥胖、饮食失调、吸烟、酗酒、自杀和吸毒——都涉及到自我调节的困难。因此，适应性不良的自我调节是导致大量心理、社会和健康问题的重要因素。我们相信，将行为科学的现有理论和研究与相关学科的平行发现相结合，可以在理解和克服自我调节问题方面取得重大进展。认知神经科学（特别是眶额叶皮层在目标追求自我调节中的作用）和成像遗传学（特别是，编码儿茶酚- o -甲基转移酶[COMT]的基因的遗传变异性，COMT是一种控制额叶皮层细胞外多巴胺的酶，影响动机显著刺激的处理）的最新发展为自我调节失败如何能够为特定个体子集提供协同视角，导致长期适应不良行为，增加对一系列重大健康问题的脆弱性。本R01应用程序的目的是：(1)验证假设的基因/环境/自我调节风险表型，赋予自我调节失败的脆弱性；(2)测试一套新的认知/行为技术，我们预测这些技术将急剧逆转导致自我调节失败的功能障碍。拟议的研究将在两个样本中进行：青少年，他们很容易开始一些危害健康的行为和心理问题，以及大学生，他们中的一些人已经经常从事这些行为并表现出心理困难。我们预测，三个因素的组合——调节焦点的个体差异、COMT基因型和实现特定个人目标的慢性失败——创造了一个自我调节途径，导致具有重大公共卫生影响的无序行为。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Human behavior involves the unique capacities to regulate our own psychological states to pursue desired goals, bring our behavior in line with internal/external standards, manage our emotions, and cope with challenges and opportunities that arise. The term self-regulation denotes the processes through which people intentionally or automatically initiate, maintain, and terminate their own thoughts and behaviors in the service of pursuing personal goals. The importance of understanding self-regulation becomes obvious when one considers the array of public health problems that can be traced to problematic goal pursuit. Many behaviors that put people at increased risk for illness, disability, and death - such as obesity, eating disorders, smoking, alcohol abuse, suicidality, and drug addiction - involve difficulties with self-regulation. Thus, maladaptive self-regulation is an important contributory factor in a large number of psychological, social, and health-related problems. We believe that significant progress can be made in understanding and overcoming self- regulatory problems by combining existing theory and research in behavioral science with parallel findings in related disciplines. Recent developments in cognitive neuroscience (specifically, the role of the orbitofrontal cortex in self-regulation of goal pursuit) and imaging genetics (specifically, how heritable variability in the gene encoding catechol-O- methyltransferase [COMT], an enzyme that controls extracellular dopamine in the frontal cortex, influences processing of motivationally salient stimuli) offer synergistic perspectives on how failure in self-regulation could, for a particular subset of individuals, lead to chronically maladaptive behavior and increase vulnerability to a range of significant health problems. The aims of this R01 application are: (1) to validate a hypothesized gene/environment/self-regulation risk phenotype conferring vulnerability to failures of self- regulation, and (2) to test a novel set of cognitive/behavioral techniques that we predict will acutely reverse the dysfunctions that underlie self-regulatory failure. The proposed research will be conducted in two samples: adolescents, who are vulnerable to initiation of a number of health-risking behaviors and psychological problems, and college students, some of whom already engage regularly in such behaviors and manifest psychological difficulties. We predict that a combination of three contributory factors - individual differences in regulatory focus, COMT genotype, and chronic failure to attain a particular kind of personal goal - creates a self- regulation pathway to disordered behaviors with significant public health implications. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The aims of this R01 application are: (1) to conduct a program of translational research validating a hypothesized gene/environment/self-regulation risk phenotype conferring vulnerability to failures of self-regulation, and (2) to test a novel set of cognitive/behavioral techniques that we predict will acutely reverse the dysfunctions that underlie self-regulatory failure. We predict that we will observe, in both adolescent and college student samples, that a combination of three contributory factors - individual differences in regulatory focus, COMT genotype, and chronic failure to attain a particular kind of personal goal - creates a self- regulation pathway to a broad array of disordered behaviors and psychological states with significant public health implications, including tobacco use, alcoholism, mood disorders, obesity, eating disorders, and impulsivity. Based on this model, we anticipate that the theory- based brief change techniques will prove efficacious and will ultimately provide a basis for effective broader-scale therapeutic and preventive interventions in future studies.